Vulcan - The Icelandic God of Travel

My apologies. I missed my last blog posting as I managed to get caught up in the aftermath of the Icelandic volcano and the subsequent travel problems that the cancelation of all flights in Europe caused.. Traveling overland from Budapest to Northern England was quite an adventure - my first purchase was a map of Europe. Nothing like a decent framework to get started on a project!

Over the four days it took for me to get home, I was able to see how three different organizations handled very similar tasks. Selling me a train ticket and providing me with enough information to enable me to decide on what my next step should be.

In Budapest, the process was effective but hardly efficient. It took three hours just to buy a ticket, and I thought we British new how to queue!

There were two queues, one for information and another to buy a ticket. Everything was done by hand, including hand written ticket.

In Germany, the process was fast and efficient. Despite arriving at 10:30 pm, the train Company had anticipated demand and had extra ticket booths and staff on duty. The ticket seller was able to provide me with good information on the availablity of trains and importantly, train connections.

Two days later I arrived in Paris where again the ticket purchase was efficient but information was a bit lacking, finally arriving in London I was able to buy a ticket from an automated machine that took me, tired and probably a bit smelly, to my destination.

So we had the same tasks being done by three different organizations in three distinct manners. Which was my best experience?

Dealing with the Company that took the big picture view of the problem - extra staff, useful and accurate information being available to those staff. Processes being linked and delivered in an efficient manner.

Interestingly, of the five train journeys, their train was not the newest or the fastest. But it was on time and comfortable enough to make the journey quite pleasant.  

To me this demonstrates the value in taking a co-ordinate big-picture view of how to run an enterprise with the customer taking a central position. The processes were in place: to react to the emergency, to gather and disseminate information, to guide Customers and to sell me a ticket. The business entities were in place and the relationships between them identified: the trains, the co-ordinated timetables, ticket offices and people. Lastly the applications were in place: to make the information available to the Company's staff, to sell the appropriate ticket and to manage seat allocation. Lastly, the infrastructure that made all of this possible, although invisible to me, was evidently in place and working well.

Processes, Entities, Applications, Infrastructure all working together.... now what does that remind me of?

 Untill next time

 Bon Voyage

 Andrew